Hamilton accepts blame for Kobayashi collision

Lewis Hamilton has made a U-turn on his previous statements, and now says that he accepts responsibility for colliding with Kamui Kobayashi.

Lewis moved to overtake Kamui in the early parts of the race, but moved back onto the racing line, where Kobayashi had already parked his car. The McLaren crashed out, while the Sauber struggled on to 12th place.

The McLaren comes off much worse in the collision

After initially claiming that Kobayashi was at fault:

"As far as I was concerned, I was ahead of whoever it was I was racing, and I got
hit by them, and that was my race over."

Lewis has now accepted that he was at fault. A brief statement from his Twitter feed reads:

"After watching the replay, I realise it was my fault today 100%. I didn’t give
Kobayashi enough room though I thought in was past. Apologies to Kamui and to
my team. The team deserves better from me."

Kamui seemed surprised that Lewis had initially blamed him, saying:

"I know I cannot fight because he is much quicker than me. He overtook me. I
don’t know if he was using the rear wing, I was just using the KERS. I think
we have very low downforce, that’s why I catch up him. Just at the end of the
straight I was staying left, and he was in the middle of the track.
He came back and we just made contact. If you see the replay later, I was
following the white line always, I don’t change at all my line. So I don’t
know what I need to do – maybe I have to go to the gravel for him? That’s
stupid, you know. He had to stay in the middle, not come back [towards me].
Definitely I was not trying to overtake him, just staying on my line, doing
my race. It’s a little bit difficult situation, because he’s fighting for
the championship. I am doing a different race!

The stewards have stated that there will be no investigation into the collision.